The Last Alchemist td-64

by Warren Murphy

  "There were fewer rules as to how one killed." Caldwell did not press further. This day, he had the three hundred thousand dollars in gold ready for Francisco. But every time he thought of paying him, his due and extra, he felt his palms grow moist with fear. Of course, he had been trained not to show it.

  "Mr. Caldwell," was all Francisco had said.

  "Francisco," was all Caldwell had said, sitting erect in his chair as though enthroned.

  Harrison Caldwell had little flat bars made for Francisco, bars stamped with the Caldwell imprint. Three hundred thousand dollars in gold didn't even cover the leather blotter on the rosewood desk.

  Francisco looked at it and clicked his heels. Caldwell wondered if one day this beautiful, deadly young man would turn on him.

  "Francisco," he said, "we have a problem. I believe some people in the nuclear facility at McKeesport, Pennsylvania, are beginning to establish a trail. It is our wish, Francisco, that since we cannot cover the trail completely, the trackers be removed."

  Caldwell explained that the head of security, according to his reports, had found a trail of bills of lading that led to the trucks, indicating they were full, not empty. She had with her two men of apparent superior ability.

  "On this matter, Francisco, I do not want attention."

  "Yes, Mr. Caldwell."

  "Do you have anything against killing a woman?"

  "I like women," said Francisco Braun. He said this with a smile. "I like them very much."

  The proud Islamic Knights didn't like the idea of killing a woman. Or a yellow man. The white would be no problem-in fact they might do him for nothing. There was general laughter in the holy mosque temple, a former jitterbug hall in Boston. A faggy white guy was putting up a lot of bread to off three people. The proud Knights had offed people just to see if a new gun worked. A white reporter came around one day, and they told him that Hitler should have killed all the Jews and then the rest of the whites. They dug Hitler. All those uniforms and concentration camps.

  When some Jews called their statement vicious and anti-semitic, the newspaper attacked the Jews. After all, blacks were now the official oppressed minority. Jews were out. Blacks were in. The paper called the Islamic Knights a positive social movement.

  The faggy white guy was offering a thousand dollars now in cash, and eighty thousand dollars when they were done. They all knew what they would do. They would take the thousand, off the three, including the woman and the yellow man, take the eighty thousand dollars and then rip off the man's watch, and maybe off the man.

  Some of them thought he was pretty enough to keep. They kept people, usually women, in rooms with locks. Sometimes they sold them. Sometimes they bought them. They had nothing to do with any Arab movement or any real Islamic movement, although they tried. The police called it breaking and entering when they were caught stealing a rug from a mosque. They called it reaching out for prayer understanding.

  Again, the local newspaper sent down the reporter, who saw all manner of integrity in the young men. When he heard a knocking in one of the closets, he asked what it was.

  "She be wantin' food. Peoples say we be doin' slavery. We gotta feed dem ladies. We gotta keep 'em in clothes. Hell, it worse than keepin' a dog." Thus spoke the exalted imam, supreme leader.

  The reporter was offered the woman as a friendly gesture. He returned to write about a misunderstood group seeking free enterprise, and called for a dialogue between the Knights and community leaders. He did not mention the desperate knocking coming from the doors. Nor did he mention that the rug belonging to the real mosque of Lebanese Sunnis was being sold right before his eyes. He had the black beat, and he didn't see how mentioning those unpleasantries would have any bearing on the stories. His story was about black men with the courage to stand up to pressure groups and criticism.

  Francisco Braun knew what he was buying. He was buying very sloppy killers. They probably had practiced on relatives first, then neighbors, and then branched out. Braun understood that every judge who released these killers back into the community had probably been responsible for more black deaths than any Ku Klux Klan chapter during the height of lynchings at the turn of the century.

  Francisco Braun did not care. He had seen their kind in the slums of the world. They did not even make good guerrillas. If Francisco Braun were to stage a black revolution in America, he would not use these, but those middle-class blacks who struggled to build homes and send their children to school. They were soldiers. This was garbage. But garbage was what he needed. Lots of it. "I want a massacre," said Francisco.

  "De green gotta be seen, man."

  "Certainly," said Francisco. He felt one of them sidle up close to him. To understand these people one had to know that a thousand dollars now was more important than a country later. They were probably thinking robbery, and possibly even male rape. Many men thought that when they saw the tender features of Francisco Braun.

  Francisco smiled gently, and with a smooth, practiced motion, put a twenty-five-caliber Beretta into the bulging pants of the young man sidling up to him, and sent a slug into the bulge. There were some very pearlwhite teeth grinning back at him from an asphalt-black face.

  Though a pumping red ooze seeped from the crotch of his pants, the pain had yet to show in the young man's face. The grin, Francisco knew, was the first reaction, the total disbelief of what had been done. The Islamic Knights understood they were not dealing with a social worker or a reporter. They were packed into three cars by evening.

  They stopped to rape and pillage a farmhouse in New Jersey until the figure of Francisco Braun appeared at the doorway.

  "Keep moving," said Francisco.

  In Pennsylvania the three carloads complained that they had been without entertainment for fifteen hours. They were suffering withdrawal symptoms. Francisco asked for someone to enumerate all their needs. They picked the supreme imam leader. Francisco listened to all the requests politely, then shot out his eyes. The three carloads did not stop until they reached a suburb of McKeesport, and the address Mr. Caldwell had given him.

  At that point, Francisco laid out machine guns, machetes, pistols, and a few hand grenades on the hoods of the cars. The young Knights could not believe their good luck. Not only were they going to off this white, they were going to cut him into pieces.

  "They're loaded," said Francisco. "In that house, down there," he said, pointing from a ridge down to a ranch house with a lit living room and three figures present around a table, "are three people without weapons. I, on the other hand, have a pistol. I can kill at least three of you before you kill me. I won't tell you which three. Now the choice is between three defenseless people who have done nothing to you, and me, a man who would like nothing better than putting blood spots on your black skin. Your choice."

  And then he smiled very sweetly. It took the Islamic Knights less than a full second to decide. With a cry of holy war they grabbed their weapons and ran screaming toward the ranch house in the little valley.

  Francisco Braun knew that a mass attack like this could not be stopped. He had seen it before. No matter how bad they were, the fury of the Knights' assault, combined with numbers, would neutralize any skill. He would have liked to do the job himself, but Mr. Caldwell had stressed he wanted distance from the crime. Too bad. There was a woman there, too. He liked women. He would have liked that woman. She was so beautiful. He ached for a woman. Sadly he turned back to his car. He could not bear to watch the pack having all the fun.

  Sometimes, he thought, money did not pay for all the longing in him. But he knew that working for Mr. Caldwell, there would always be more women. As Mr. Caldwell had said:

  "Great wealth needs a great sword. You, Francisco Braun, are my sword. Plan on it being moist."

  And Francisco knew he had found the one man he wanted to work for, knew it even as he knelt on one knee before his lord.

  Sadly, Francisco got into his own car. The shooting should be starting now. He turned to hi
s engine. Perhaps that had blocked the sound. He opened the window. Still no sound. He had given them AK-47's, an excellent field weapon, perhaps the best. Nothing. Not even a grenade going off or the sound of a machete. Francisco Braun got out of the car and looked down into the valley. An old man in flowing robes was returning into the house. Three carloads of ghetto youths lay in the driveway. There had not even been a yell. Not a cry.

  Now loud sounds came from the house. A man was growling, something about cleaning up bodies. The older man, the Oriental, turned his back on the younger, the white. The white was complaining.

  "If you kill them, you clean them up. There are large garbage bags in the kitchen. You can get them as well as anyone."

  The younger white moved the bodies around like small cartons, stacking them as he complained about always getting the dirty work. Three carloads stacked like a pyramid.

  Francisco estimated the bodies were from 170 to 270 pounds. And they flew onto the pile.

  "The last time," said the white. And then, as though he had known Francisco was looking down all along, he glanced up to the hill.

  "Hey, sweetheart, you want yours?" said the man. Francisco knew he wanted that man as he had wanted no one else in the world. He wanted the young one. And he wanted the old one, and then in ultimate satisfaction he would finish off, like a dessert, the woman. They were all his now. And Mr. Caldwell could not possibly mind that he took them himself. The plan of the ghetto youths had failed.

  Chapter 5

  Francisco Braun did not collect the reward for killing the fiercest man in Barcelona by rushing in. Granted, he could crack a man's ribs with a single karate blow. He had put out the eyes of a fleeing woman at fifty yards with a fine handgun. And she had been a fast woman, too. Even faster after she dropped her baby.

  But the greatest weapons Francisco Braun had at his command were reason and patience. And he forced himself to move correctly even though his passion to take all three immediately strained him mightily. They had killed the garbage he had picked up in Boston. Physically, they moved extraordinarily well, so fast he had not been able to determine which school of hand fighting they used. He could get off a shot now. But that might be risky. He might get one and then have to hunt the others, because he did not know what these men could do. He did not know who they were, and if he did not know who they were, he just might miss. They had shown they were special, very special.

  Of course, if he launched a grenade into the house now, they would probably scatter in confusion and he could pick them off. Probably. But he was not alive because of probabilities.

  Besides, he had help now, a man who truly knew how to use power. And Francisco Braun knew how to use what he had. He was never one who preferred to get his hands dirty when he didn't have to.

  Already he had an advantage over the two men in the house below him. He knew how dangerous they were. But they had no idea how dangerous he was, or that he was going to kill them. They couldn't even know he was there. That had always been more than enough of an edge to make Francisco victorious. There was no reason to believe it would change now. He would know them, they would not know him, and then he would kill them. He had been lucky that they had shown themselves, lucky that he had not gone in first.

  He returned to the trunk of the car, took out a briefcase, and opened it to two long black lenses that clicked into each other. Then he carefully screwed them into a large frame camera, to which he attached a light but steady tripod.

  It was cool in the Pennsylvania hill country, but the air was not refreshing. The stench of distant slag heaps from old coal mines created an odor like rotting coffee grounds smoldering in the center of the earth. The small house looked warm and friendly with logs burning in the fireplace of the living room. Francisco Braun focused the camera on the living room. Above the fireplace mantel was a photograph. When he could read the photographer's name in the corner of the photograph, he knew that the lens was in correctly. He moved the focus back to the door.

  And then in a split second, with less concern than a carpenter hammering in the thousandth nail of a roof. Francisco Braun shot out the living-room window with a handgun that he had back in his pocket even before the echoes of the shots returned from the dark Pennsylvania hills.

  The older and younger man were out of the front door before all the glass had settled, and Francisco's camera whirred off twenty-five shots in one second. By the second second, he had the camera in one hand and the door to his car open in the other. Before the third, he was driving away as fast as the car could pick up speed.

  Outside McKeesport, Pennsylvania, he slowed down and took the film out of the camera. By the time he reached New York City, and the home of Mr. Caldwell, he was cruising comfortably. He called for an appointment with Mr. Caldwell. Mr. Caldwell sometimes called himself an American. But Francisco knew he had to be something else. Mr. Caldwell had never asked to be called Harrison. The problem with Americans was they wanted to be everyone's friends. Mr. Caldwell had that wonderful ability not to want that. That made working for him easier. You knew Mr. Caldwell was Mr. Caldwell. He was not your friend.

  "This is Francisco Braun. I would like to see Mr. Caldwell at his convenience," Francisco said into the telephone with raised braille numbers in the dial handle. These could be punched in the dark, quite necessary because the phone was in the photographic darkroom set up in his Upper East Side New York apartment. Mr. Caldwell had put him there, with a direct-access line, the day after he had called Francisco his "sword."

  "We will give an audience this afternoon," said the secretary, and Francisco got the hour, without wondering what "audience" meant. He had his pictures, twenty in less than a second, each taken faster than an eye could blink or an eardrum pick up sound.

  In photography, as in the rest of life, Francisco had learned that an advantage was always balanced by a disadvantage somewhere else. In other words, nothing was free. Despite the incredible clarity of his lenses and the large format, the high speed of his rapid shots needed a film so fast and volatile that the photographs ultimately came out with little more clarity than a child's snapshot. But that would be enough to start a search into the backgrounds of these men, if Mr. Caldwell was as powerful as he seemed. Money, after all, was power. To find out about the backgrounds of these men, Francisco would, of course, find out exactly what they could do, or where they would be or who they were. And when one built enough advantages, one struck. This for opponents who were a cut above. The rest of mankind could be dispatched at whim, at gravesides or meeting halls, or wherever.

  There was a calm in the beautiful blond face of Francisco Braun as the strip of film moved through the developer and then into a rinse, and finally into the chemicals that would stop the developing process so no more light could affect the images. This would fix the negatives. With the best negatives, he would make prints, and then he would have his victims' faces set before him to study at leisure. More important, this would give him something to pass on for identification.

  He liked the intricate power of Bach on stereo as he worked. It soothed the inner elements of his mind. It saved him from whistling. It set the mood. These would be extraordinary kills, not common disposals. He remembered the smooth way the Islamic Knights were dispatched. He wished he had had his camera out then. But he had not expected them to fail. There had been too many, no matter how incompetent. Incompetence after all, was why he had chosen them.

  A strange thing came up on what appeared to be the best negatives. The face of the white appeared to be looking toward the camera. Three frames. Full face. That was an improbable fluke. Impossible, really, because no one was going to notice what was on a distant hill in one second, especially in the confusion of the aftermath of having a living-room window shot out. Francisco had seen it before-in panic and confusion the heads would bob about in every direction. Only because the camera was so fast could it appear that a person actually had noticed, then looked at, the camera. Pictures did lie.

 
This would always be clearer in the print, even with the lesser quality of the high-speed film Francisco used. The eyes would be open, almost dead, because they were really unfocused. The face, of course, would have the mouth wide open, because in panic, people stopped breathing through their noses and used their mouths. The body, too, would testify to the panic. The trunk would be moving in one direction and the arms flailing about in another. Of course, on this negative, it looked as though the target was somewhat composed. But that might have been due to his extraordinary ability at hand fighting, perhaps some automatic body control. Of course, he could not be composed, and that would come clear in the prints.

  Francisco ran the negatives into a drum which could print before the negatives were dry. He punched in the numbers of the box that he kept close by. The box was not for film. Nor did it hold any other photographic accoutrements. Instead, it kept a single Waterford crystal glass of red wine barely chilled. Life, after all, was made up of these moments. He was always between one kill and another. Why not take the pleasure of Bach and a good Beaujolais while waiting?

  Unlike most wine experts, Francisco preferred his red wine without the customary breathing period of an hour. He liked that extra bit of sharpness. And he always had only one glass and never more. He poured the rest of the wine down the developing sink.

  The drum whirred, Bach sang through the instruments over the centuries, and the red wine flowed over Francisco's tongue, then ever so gently through his body. When the drum clicked, Francisco knew two things: that the pictures were printed and that he had one-half glass left to enjoy.

  With precise movements he removed the three frames, laid them out, and turned on the light.